A cranium-scratching whodunit is how University of Hawaii receiver Ammon Barker became invisible last football season.

The online scorebook showed he played in nine of 13 games in 2015. But there were no fingerprints of his participation, certainly not on the Wilson footballs. After starting the final three games of 2014, Barker drew a blank in 2015: No catches, no passes thrown his way.

“That’s not my place to say (what happened),” Barker said. “That was the coaches’ decision.”

Barker bit his mouthpiece, and never grumbled. That was not the family code.

He had the support of Patti and Bart Barker, a couple who adopted Ammon and twin sister Amaleah the day they were born in a Utah hospital in 1995, and guidance from five older siblings.

When the twins were in the fourth grade, Amaleah yelled back at a gang of sixth-grade bullies. From then, Ammon took charge.

“He never allowed anyone to become bullied,” Bart recalled. “He became friends with the weaker students. He was always the team captain in gym, and he would always pick the special-needs kids and the unpopular ones to be on his team. He didn’t care about winning the game in the gym. He cared about the kids.”

He also showed determination. The day the family moved to Sandy, Utah, a preteen Ammon went to each house on their street, knocked on the doors, and asked: “Are there any kids here?”

“He found friends,” Bart recalled, chuckling. “He’s got the most friends, probably, than anyone from the Salt Lake valley.”

Ammon competed in hockey, basketball, lacrosse, track and football. “He was very, very busy,” Patti said. “I always called him my caged lion. He didn’t like sitting still.”

The Barkers said their son never became discouraged — not when UCLA pulled its scholarship following a coaching change, not when last year’s new offensive system was not designed with Ammon in mind.

“It was frustrating at times, but at the end of the day, I wanted to see our team be successful and win games,” said Ammon, who relished playing time — any time — even as a scout-team receiver in practices. “I was just trying to play.”

In December, when Nick Rolovich was hired as head coach, the past abstracts were tossed. “I didn’t know anything about him as a player,” said Rolovich, who instead focused on each player’s academic record and character references.

Ammon and his teammates worked on pass routes during unsupervised workouts in the two months leading to this spring training. By the first spring practice, Ammon was adept at running routes off each defensive coverage. He has been on the first-team rotation at right wideout.

“He’s impressive,” Rolovich said.

Ammon said: “I’m trying to get better every practice. I’d like to be starting by the first game, but as far as what I can control, it’s just giving 100 percent.”

The family follows Ammon through Internet reports and an online subscription to this newspaper. Patti said it is difficult to be nearly 3,000 miles away from their youngest son.

“He left on his 18th birthday to fly to Hawaii (in 2013),” Patti said. “It was real hard, and it still is hard to have him gone.”

But Ammon appears to be following the path of his namesake, who is featured in the “Book of Mormon.”

“Ammon was a warrior missionary,” Bart said. “He went to a different culture, and chose to live with that culture the rest of his life.”